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The phrase "war on terror" has been dumped from the British government's vocabulary, according to up-and-coming International Development Secretary Hilary Benn.

Benn, speaking at New York University – not far from the site of the 9/11 World Trade Center bombing – said that the term only inflates the expectations of small groups of extremists, and distorts the current struggle against political and religious violence.

"We do not use the phrase `war on terror' because we can't win by military means alone," he said. "And because this isn't us against one organized enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives."

The struggle, he added, was really of "the vast majority of the people in the world – of all nationalities and faiths – against a small number of loose, shifting and disparate groups who have relatively little in common apart from their identification with others who share their distorted view of the world and their idea of being part of something bigger."

In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair has been pilloried for embracing the anti-terror war waged by President George W. Bush, who persuaded him to join in the invasion of Iraq. Since then Blair's popularity has plummeted even with his own party, and he was lampooned in a TV satire that pictured him on trial at a war crimes tribunal.

Getting rid of the "war on terror" label is "very long overdue," says Andrew Mack, director of the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia: "Britain is probably the only country in the world the Americans take seriously."

But in the U.S., experts say, Britain's attempt to distance itself from the multi-front war on terror is unlikely to hit home.

"The phrase is totally wrong, but we're stuck with it," admits Charles Peña, a senior fellow of the California-based Independent Institute. "It's a great idea to get rid of it. But when you say something enough times it becomes part of the nomenclature."

Since the September 2001 attacks on the United States by Al Qaeda, the war on terror has become a political umbrella covering violence from Iraq to Indonesia.

In 2001 it sparked the war in Afghanistan, which ousted but failed to defeat the Taliban.

A year later the Indonesian resort of Bali was bombed by Al Qaeda, with 187 dead. Russia claimed the capture of a Moscow theatre by armed Chechen rebels – and later the bloody siege of a school in Beslan – as part of the war on terror.

Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, insurgency and civil war exploded, with Iraqi and international terror groups digging in for a long fight.

Since then, bombers have attacked Madrid, London and Mumbai, with hundreds of casualties. Most recently, fighting between Somali Islamists and Ethiopian troops trying to oust them has taken a large toll of civilians. And a new wing of Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for suicide bombings in Algiers.

But, says Hilary Homes, security and human rights campaigner for Amnesty International in Canada, using the "war on terror" as an excuse to block individual rights is a mistake.

"We believe in cutting through the rhetoric," she says. "Language matters. Instead of using generalizations that paint all groups with the same brush, we should refer to specific actors and actions, not dress them up in language that leaves people wondering what is actually going on."

John Stauber agrees: "The `global war on terror' has always constituted inaccurate hyperbole on the part of the Bush Administration," argues Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy in Wisconsin. "It's more a propaganda device than based on reality. The British are being smart and realistic to move away from it."

And, adds Philip Coyle of the Center for Defense Information, and a former U.S. assistant defence secretary, "for the first six years of Bush's presidency it paid off politically to make a crusade of the war on terror. Now, day after day, people are seeing it hasn't worked."

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